


i wish we never learned to fly

by LilyEllison



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e04 Penny and Dime, F/M, these two are very Soft for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 14:30:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEllison/pseuds/LilyEllison
Summary: Elektra's father dies, and she's all alone in the world. An ocean away, Matt hears the news. (Set in the lead-up to Elektra's first appearance in 2x04 Penny and Dime.)





	i wish we never learned to fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mrs Gordo (MrsGordo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsGordo/gifts).

> Written for my beloved Mrs Gordo, the [Elodie to my Charlie](https://calepsicoup.tumblr.com/post/142905990589/so-my-friend-did-this-and-sent-it-to-me). This is my first time writing this ship, so apologies if I screw up any canon! This fills my Mattelektra Bingo prompt "daddy dearest."

Elektra got concerned when the hallucinations started.

Well, maybe they weren't hallucinations exactly. She knew they weren't real. But they were breathtakingly vivid.

The first time it happened, she was in her spacious closet in the apartment in Athens, getting ready for the funeral. She felt Matthew's presence behind her. He zipped up her dress and kissed her neck before putting his arms around her, strong as steel, gentle as rain. "I'll be with you the whole time," he said into her ear. "If we need to get out of there at any point, just squeeze my hand three times, OK?"

She bit her lip, sharp enough to hurt, and he disappeared.

He was there at the cemetery, too, his hand on her arm as she dropped a single orchid onto her father's casket, her eyes dry. She dug her fingernails into her palm until he left her.

She wasn't even surprised when he was sitting next to her in the first-class lounge at the airport, smiling sadly at her as she sipped something bracing. "Just relax now," he said. "I'll take care of everything." She closed her eyes as he kissed her forehead, and this time she pretended he was still there until they called her flight for boarding.

She hadn’t stayed in Athens any longer than was necessary. The arrangements had taken forever; they'd all demanded so much from her — the extended family and the former colleagues and the endless parade of officials who had to pay their respects. She'd always been a rebelliously minded but ultimately dutiful daughter, to both of her fathers. She often didn't like it, and it was always on her terms, but she generally did as she was told. She always played her role.

Afterward, she hopped around from place to place for a while, taking on jobs, spending extravagantly, letting people who thought they knew her treat her in her grief. But when the months passed and she couldn’t put it off anymore, she bought a ticket to New York.

She’d run out of excuses for Stick, and, well, she couldn't keep going like this. She couldn’t keep seeing his face everywhere. She needed to get him out of her system, one way or another.

She didn't try to sleep on the red-eye, preferring to stay awake, just in case he showed up again. Her dreams about him were usually nightmares, and that wouldn't do. Too often she saw the look he gave her in the moment she realized she'd gotten so good at lying that she'd fooled herself.

She'd escaped from him, from them, from feelings and consequences, only to find it all breathing down her neck whenever she had a moment’s rest.

And now she was being haunted. 

Elektra hadn’t been particularly close to her father — how could she have been, when she’d always worn a mask? — but she had an undeniable fondness for him. He had been part of a world that wasn’t Stick’s. He’d given her something beyond ninjas and death. 

Her feelings for Matthew were all she had left to tie her to that world. But the rope was frayed, and now she had no choice but to tug on her end as hard as she could, pull him toward her darkness again. Whether it held or snapped was up to him.

(It never occurred to her, not once, that even a frayed rope could be pulled in the other direction.)

* * *

Matt woke up knowing something had happened. He just didn’t know what. He rolled over and felt his watch for the time. The sun was warm on his sheets, but he definitely didn’t need to be up yet. Not on the weekend. Still, something was nagging in his chest.

He sat up and stretched sleepily on the side of the bed. Going to happy hour with Foggy and Karen and leaving just enough time to sober up before spending the night out on the streets was maybe not the best recipe for healthy living. But it made them both so happy — hell, it made him so happy — that he couldn’t resist.

His feet touched the cool floor and he walked over to his radio. His head didn’t really want any more unnecessary noise, not even the generally soothing tones of public radio personalities, but something had gotten him out of bed. There was the usual stuff, politics and a natural disaster somewhere, and then he heard it.

“Hugo Natchios, a Greek shipping magnate whose long career included an eight-year stint as his country’s ambassador to the United States, has died. He was 78,” the newscaster said. “Despite his training in diplomacy, Natchios is probably best remembered for a faux pas early in his retirement, when he referred to then-President George W. Bush as a ‘blithering idiot’ while still wearing a microphone at a charity event. Natchios is survived by his daughter, Elektra, a philanthropist and socialite who inherits her family’s vast wealth…”

The voice continued, but Matt’s head was too full to understand the words. Even after all this time, his first instinct was to call her, to go to her, to fly halfway around the world to stand by her side. But it faded quickly. He didn’t even know how to reach her. He could find out, of course, but if she wanted him to, well, he would know.

Matt had never met Elektra’s father. He didn’t know much about him, other than what he’d occasionally heard on the news. He’d always seemed more like a figurehead than a person, someone only glimpsed at a remove, even when Elektra talked about him. Matt was the one who had really opened up about his father, who had let Elektra crash into the beating heart of his history, right up until she tried to rip it out of his chest. 

He’d let her in, and she had—

He felt the old flare of anger, quick and hot, fueled by the kindling of confusion and grief. What she’d done had been unthinkable, and yet—and yet—what was worse was that she’d _left_. She’d known. She’d known everything about him and she’d still taken off and never come back.

He sighed and switched off the radio. He got back into bed, pulling the sheet up high under his chin, the silky slide of it reminding him of that first night he spent in Elektra’s penthouse, the night he remembered with a shock that sleep hadn’t always itched.

(He’d think of that later, the irony of Stick chiding him for his silk sheets when it had been Stick’s own agent who introduced them to his bed. But, of course, he’d probably known all along. Matt had just misunderstood the warning.)

And it wasn’t just the sheets. Matt’s entire closet was a testament to Elektra's education of his skin. He couldn’t outfit himself the way she would — his pockets weren’t deep enough for that — but he could find a bargain. He knew what to feel for in weave and cut, and didn’t have to worry about getting ripped off. Or trusting Foggy’s taste.

There were textures he missed, too. Things he wouldn’t have reason to buy for himself. Her crisp linen and impossibly luxe cashmere, that pair of suede pants that had driven him wild, her _lingerie_. None of the other sweet-smelling rich girls at Columbia — and he’d reeled in quite a few when he was up for that sort of thing again — could ever match the feast that Elektra had been for his fingers. No one could match the sparks she scattered with her lively mind, the fire she stirred in his blood.

It was possible that all too often when Matt got dressed in the morning, when he slid into bed at night, he thought about Elektra Natchios. But that would be pathetic, to still be thinking of a girl — and she wasn’t much more than a girl; it was only now that he could begin to appreciate how _young_ they’d been — who had left him years ago.

So as the months passed, he kept on not thinking about her, not thinking about the heartless girl whose heartbeat was still his favorite song.

* * *

It certainly wasn’t hard to track Matthew down. Elektra had never lost track of him in the first place. And track was the right word, because he was on one. Matthew had graduated from college, gone to law school as planned, started working at some white-shoe firm.

But then he’d left behind the financial rewards of big law to go into business for himself. And now he was practically penniless. Which was handy for her own purposes — she’d turned Matthew’s head with her money before, though he probably would never admit it — but also completely incomprehensible.

She knew him, who he really was, but he was always denying it, covering it up. He could be so powerful, so masterful, a true force to be reckoned with. But he contented himself with silly half-measures. A dingy office in the day. A pair of horns at night. Even in the darkness, he had to distance himself behind a mask. 

He was always doing things she didn’t understand. 

Matthew was like the books she had discovered on that first day in her new father’s study when she was a girl. Covered in unfamiliar writing — the most beautiful language she had ever seen. It was thrilling and impenetrable and she fell in love immediately.

The difference was that Greek had come easily to her. Within months she could read it without trouble, and she spoke it so fluently now that people assumed it was her first language when she was introduced as the ambassador’s daughter. It was commonplace to her — lovely but not something she paid much attention to anymore.

But Matthew — he was still a foreign tongue and she was as much in love as ever.

* * *

The ridiculous part, the stupid cliche misery of it all, was that Matt really hadn’t thought of her that day. He hadn’t caught a phantom trace of her scent in any crowd, hadn’t heard a hint of an accent that made his head tilt, even for a second.

The Punisher, that heartbreaking madman, was finally off the streets. The gangs were reeling from his bloody one-man war. And Fisk was still sleeping behind bars. The Kitchen was quieter, and he could breathe.

Every step home in the rain had felt like it was washing him clean, carrying away the blood and the sweat and the tears. He was soaked and smiling and his head was echoing with Foggy’s _you just might end up happy_, so he didn’t even hear her heartbeat until it cut right through him, sharper than the knife he automatically grabbed from the counter.

“Hello, Matthew,” Elektra said.

She tugged on the rope, testing it. He could already feel it start to burn.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from i love you by Billie Eilish. I also made a teeny edit from that song [here](https://gracenm.tumblr.com/post/187282557815/never-been-the-type-to-let-someone-see-right) (though I screwed up the lyrics a little, dammit).


End file.
